Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, who suspended his campaign for the GOP gubernatorial nomination on Wednesday, is angry. He prefers to say that he’s not an angry or bitter guy, and that instead, he is “disappointed” in the Republican party leadership, and the direction they have chosen to take the organization.

Whatever his emotional state, Mr. Bolling has nursed the idea that he could run as an independent candidate for governor. In his Two Minute Drill, Jim Hoeft says it amounts to sour grapes: “He may garner enough support to derail Mr. Cuccinelli’s plans, but he certainly will not become governor. If anything, he will allow the Democratic nominee to waltz into the governor’s mansion with a plurality of the votes.”

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In other words- If I can’t be Governor, no other Republican can either, Cuccinelli or anyone else. I guess we are about to see just how much he is willing to throw away both personally and party wise. Hopefully he won’t be willing to purchase his political coffin prematurely. Isn’t there anyone close to Bolling that has the guts to ask him to please have his meltdown in private, before he does something he will truly regret later?

oldgeezer

Personally I think that Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling could serve Virginia best by serving four more years..

Only a month to go before we fall off the “Obama Fiscal Cliff”….
Wonder how people will like the ” Obama Tax Increases ” ???

http://www.facebook.com/rick.boyer.771 Rick Boyer

The whole flap over Bill Bolling pulling out of the Governor’s race
and threatening to run as an independent has stoked emotions on both
sides. To me, it reveals the blatant hypocrisy of folks who savaged
Virgil Goode for running against Mitt Romney (never mind that Virgil’s
differences with Romney were very significant, and we’re all told that
Bill Bolling actually is a conservative and not that different from Ken
Cuccinelli).

But what’s more important to me than which individual is right or
wrong, is that this whole flap sets out in sharp relief two of the
greatest things WRONG with the modern incarnation of the Republican
Party – certainly at a national level and perhaps even more exaggerated
in the Republican Party of Virginia. I think each deserves our
attention.

1.We tend to idolize individual politicians. I believe our Founders
would have warned us against this. We ought to look to the American
people for direction, not to self-anointed leaders. Perhaps this was
best expressed by one longtime Republican activist who stated that with
Bolling’s withdrawal, she would just retire from politics.

Are we serious? Are our years of effort really so tied up in the
worship of a single man or woman that the person’s defeat leaves us
without a cause for which to fight? There is no candidate out there,
Bolling, Cuccinelli or otherwise, who deserves that level of idolatry.
Many of us in the “party activist” ranks are the folks most susceptible
to the clearly false idea that “Congress stinks, but MY Congressman is a
great guy.” This attitude of “politician worship” leads us to judge
what is right or wrong on the basis of our preferred politician’s
actions, instead of judging our politicians with an honest yardstick of
objective right and wrong; that is, we measure truth by a man instead of
measuring a man (or woman) by the truth. That’s why it’s “wrong” for
Virgil Goode to challenge Romney, but “right” for Bolling to do the same
thing to Cuccinelli. We become a nation of men, not of law.

2.We look at public office as something to be “deserved” because the
politician has “paid his dues,” or “put in his time.” Now “it’s his
turn.” This attitude is cancerous. In truth, public office is a high
honor, and more importantly, a sacred trust. PUBLIC OFFICE IS NOT
SOMETHING A POLITICIAN DESERVES; IT IS SOMETHING HE HOLDS IN TRUST,
RESPONSIBLE TO SERVE THE WISHES OF THE PEOPLE WHO PUT HIM THERE. No one
“deserves” four more years on the taxpayer dime because they have
already been granted twenty. No one “deserves” a promotion to the
highest office in the state because he has been blessed to hold the
second-highest. It is destructive to believe that I, as the citizen, owe
some allegiance to an elected official because he’s been there. We are
not far removed from the “divine right of kings” theory.

As a party, we MUST reverse our thinking. Our elected officials are NOT
our rulers; they are our servants. Being on the taxpayer dime is a
privilege, not a guarantee of tenure for life and automatic promotion.
They are our REPRESENTATIVES. WE are the rulers; THEY are the servants,
who serve at our pleasure. We owe them nothing; they owe us everything.
We have lost all concept of government of, by and for the people, and
we must reverse our thinking.

How do we address both these problems? By a paradigm shift in our
thinking. Today we view a “Party” as a group of folks bound together by a
blood oath to “elect Republicans,” and then to serve and re-elect those
incumbents basically for life. If we are to move forward, we MUST view a
“Party” as a group of folks bound together by a basically shared set of
IDEALS, PRINCIPLES – sworn to find folks who subscribe to those ideas
to support at election time, to hold them accountable once elected, and
to REPLACE THEM if they “become destructive of those ends” for which we
elected them, as the Declaration put it. WE MUST BE DRIVEN BY IDEAS, NOT
POLITICIANS.

What are those basic ideas? For simple starters, our elected
officials MUST believe in Life and Liberty. They must stand without
apology for the simple understanding that unless we ALL have the right
to life, everything else is but window dressing. The “Republican” state
senator who bottles up pro-life legislation in committee, who “reaches
out to single women” in a craven bid for power, with the lives of
innocents as the 30 pieces of silver he trades for votes, is as shameful
as the openly pro-partial birth abortion Democrat. Secondly, our
officials MUST understand the government is too big, and be committed IN
PRACTICE to making it smaller. Not “smaller growth,” but making it
smaller. Almighty God only demands 10 percent; government already
demands 40-50%. How DARE we consider “raising revenue” or raising debt
ceilings? EVERY MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD IN THIS COUNTRY IS ALREADY IN DEBT
$250,000! It is UNCONSCIONABLE for a Republican, yea for an American, to
support allowing unelected groups of bureaucrats to have the authority
to tax us. Yet our Governor, Lieutenant Governor and most “Republican”
Congressmen and state legislators supported the creation of unelected
taxing authorities. We used to have one of those; his name was King
George III. We had to fight a war to get rid of him. A politician who
votes us back to 1775 shouldn’t get another chance!

If we will swear our allegiance to Life and Liberty, and make our
politicians run the gauntlet of Principle before they “earn” our votes,
we will, as party activists, rebuild the trust in this party that 2012
proved we have so manifestly lost. If we continue to put “Truth upon the
scaffold and Man upon the throne,” we deserve the contemptuous title of
“party hack.” We are, like it or not, accountable for the votes we cast
and the folks we help elect. If they betray our Ideals and we wink at
it, we too have become Judas. We too have broken faith with the folks
who trust us, as activists, to present them with leaders who earn their
trust.

This “Bolling’s Charlie Crist moment,” as Richard Viguerie puts it,
is a Moment of Truth for us as a Party, and as its activists. Will we be
content to be hacks, or will we determine to be a new breed of freedom
fighters, rebuilding from the ashes of 2012 the dream our Founders
bequeathed to us. Forget Bolling vs. Cuccinelli; I call us to choose –
Are we in service of Men, or in service to Liberty? IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO
BE BOTH!

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